


broken breaths

by rxpley



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Percy-centric, Post-Briarwood Arc (Critical Role), Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:27:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22780228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rxpley/pseuds/rxpley
Summary: In the days following the Briarwoods, Percy can't breathe.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 43





	broken breaths

No, he doesn’t think it hurts.

It doesn’t hurt like the way one would expect — not jagged, sharp and wild like an arrow. Not like the intense, paralyzing heat of a bullet either.

The pain drags through him instead — pulls his lungs down and upwards so that he feels his lungs so achingly far from himself and far from his mouth gasping for air (someone help him _,_ anyone. he can’t breathe) while still feeling them crammed impossibly high into his throat so he — eloquent, always eloquent, smart-ass Percy — cannot think of what to say. The breaths he does breath, entirely labored, come out tinted black.

But he doesn’t have to say anything; his sister doesn’t so he doesn’t have to. Instead, Cassandra stares at him with the same wide eyed look that he’s sure he’s looking at her with. Her eyes are distant; this form of her so different and so chillingly similar to the younger sister she saw years ago. 

He opens his mouth to say something then — it’s been a day. A smile. He should smile once. They were both freed after all — her from the Briarwoods and him from Orthax. Their family, saved and avenged. Finally freed after years. Finally reunited.

But she turns away from him then, and he feels his lungs twist a little at that. He watches his new, incomprehensible, painful  younger  — no, younger doesn’t feel right. It's implying that he still has an older one. So he watches his sister leave then with a vague feeling, and his lungs stretch themselves to shreds inside of him.

➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺

  
  


A few more days of empty confrontation and substanceless conversations with other members of Vox Machina, and he resigns himself to his work space.The room smells mildly of cold stone and ashes. He’s not really quite sure what he expected. 

No, he knew what he expected. There was that faint, acrid lurk of chemicals — and behind that something else. He knew what it was — saw it splattered across the floor and on the instruments from that time years ago and felt it come out of him with an odd sort of relief how strange how unreal it felt to feel himself could that really be part of him come out it was so warm and he was so cold and he was afraid and he — 

He's not sure if it hurts. He’s not sure if he feels pain for it. Still, he collapses to his knees in his workshop then. It feels so wrong to have this part of him violated by her. It had been his only haven — the only sense of constancy in his life the one part of him he knew was his after he left. After he ran from that Time.

He wraps his fingers around himself then. His scarred hands — the both of them a little too scarred to simply claim accidents from his studies — touch just below his shoulders. They feel a little more disconnected from him then. He feels a little smaller then too. His lungs that were in his mouth settled back down then. His breaths pulse uncomfortably against his forearms.

Who was he now?

Without his gun, without Orthax, without his family: his sister didn’t talk to him. He couldn’t talk with her.

Who was he?

He was not Percival. Not Percival Fredrickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III. He had done nothing to earn the titles of those names. He had done nothing for his family. Tried to avenge themselves — and he couldn’t even do that. 

He was not the Percival of his younger ages though. His shaking hands, his hair several shades too light, and his haunting pains from that Time could attest to that.

He wasn’t the Percy that his friends knew either. He wasn’t the Percival that his friends had first met when he had just started calling them friends. He had no gun now. Nothing motivating him anymore. 

He pulls his arms tighter then. As if he could gather the bits of Percival still left — scattered like broken china across the floor — and press it closer to himself. His body aches a weird ache then. His damned lungs pulls upwards and downwards, stretching him to impossibility. 

He throws a fist into his chest then. The warmth of the impact on his fingers centers him, grounded him. His action scare him for a second, and he takes the fear in his gut like a punch. He holds his shaking hand up to examine it. A morbid, disdainful feeling of disgust fills him as he looks at his hands. Useless. 

These were the hands that had written those scientific notes; the hands that had inquired and searched and pulled through books, the hands that would eventually tempt the Briarwoods, the hands that would kill his family and hurt his now friends and lead to this, this —

Clarity. 

It fills his senses like an unbelievable gust of cold wind. He can breathe.

He unwraps his body from himself. Stands up. Lays his hand across the light of the kiln. He would aim for the pointer finger. 

When he comes to his senses, he’s cradling his finger against his chest. His head rests itself on the edge of the table and his knees have fallen to the floor in pain. His breaths come in jagged gasps and he realized — between the pain — a line of drool has fallen from his open mouth onto the floor. He’s been screaming. Or breathing. He can’t remember.

But it hurts. He knows that. His breaths come out in dark plumes, staining his throat and tasting of ash.

  
  


➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺

  
  


He knows that — no, he admits that he wasn’t thinking. But all of him is a little too tired of thinking, and besides thinking wouldn’t be a good excuse. He could say he had been forging. That would be better

“I wasn’t thinking,” he says instead. His unused voice comes out heavy, ash filled and cracked. 

He expects a reproachful tone. The one that he always hears directed at Scanlan after he does something incredibly stupid — or, even more so, the tone that she uses when Scanlan convinces Grog to do something of that nature. But he hears none of it. 

Instead, Pike sighs. “Percy, I know it’s been hard. If you want — if you want to talk, I’m here alright?”

Her voice draws something out of him. A part of Percy wants to let go right there — to just cry and break down.

“Percy — we just want to know that you’re okay.”

He freezes then. And he remembers exactly how alone he is in this world. 

So he nods. Stays quiet. Doesn’t look Pike in the eyes. 

(Pike’s hands close around his, and he vaguely watches himself flinch against her touch. The golden, intense warmth of Sarenrae’s healing closes around his fingers. Finger untouched.)

And turns around, broken finger healed, back to the workshop.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I wish more attention had been put towards Cassandra's and Percival's relationship during the stream because — god knows — those two needed to have a conversation.


End file.
